A blog by Kristen O'Meara

Note to Parade Magazine: Big Mistake. Big. Huge.

I love Sunday mornings, which I ritually begin with a trip outside with the dog and return with the Sunday Chicago Tribune. Then I plop down on the couch with a cup of coffee and tackle the crossword puzzle. After that’s out of the way, I read the paper nearly cover to cover. Imagine my surprise and confusion yesterday morning when the Parade magazine (a tabloid-style rag with celebrity news, no-brainer, recycled tips on staying healthy and fit, and an inspirational celebrity cover story) slipped out from the plastic-sleeved advertising packet. On the cover was a picture of Benazir Bhutto with the headline, “I Am What The Terrorists Most Fear” and the question, “Is Benazir Bhutto America’s best hope against al-Qaeda?”

My first reaction was one of confusion. I mean, hadn’t she been assassinated more than a week before? Had there been some kind of mistake? With a furrowed brow I flipped to the story and scanned it for some kind of explanation. Nothing. The writer of the piece, Gail Sheehy, refers to Bhutto as a “riddle of a woman” who is “brilliant, beautiful, fearless [and] also ruthlessly ambitious, devious and corrupt” (never mind that those who accused her of corruption were likely corrupt themselves). When Sheehy feels that Bhutto is seeking pity, she states that she “moans” and “whimpers…As if on cue, tears fall.” Bhutto isn’t surprised by the author’s suggestion of corruption; according to Sheehy, she “feigns surprise.” A big, blown-up quote states, “‘She will work with anyone to get back into power,’ says her own niece” (she’s the daughter of Bhutto’s slain brother, and she blames Bhutto for his death). Sheehy explains that “Bhutto’s own family dismisses her little-girl lost script. ‘Her father’s death was enormously convenient for her politically,’ her American-educated niece, Fatima Bhutto, tells me. ‘She has no legacy of her own so she rests on her father’s laurels.'”

The article goes on and on with disparaging and highly subjective remarks (Bhutto’s supposed manipulation of Musharraf was “true to form,” as if Sheehy knows her well enough to judge such a thing) and repeatedly uses her obviously hostile niece as a source of slanderous quotes. I was floored by the article’s lack of journalistic integrity. The entire piece was condescending, judgmental and only addressed its stated question at the very end, when Sheehy explained that Bhutto might be a more effective partner than Musharraf in cooperating with the U.S. and NATO on the war on terror. The rest was subjective fluff, never giving the reader any meaningful insight into her life (other than mentioning her father’s execution), what led her to her place in it, or any sense of what she represented in the minds of the Pakistani people.

By this point I had assumed that Parade magazine goes to press long in advance of the 400 papers it supplements, and that it made the editorial decision to distribute the magazine anyway. This assumption proved to be correct and very troubling. On NPR, Parade’s publisher Randy Siegel said that getting Parade out is “not like publishing a daily newspaper. It’s simply different.” While noting that pulling the magazine would have cost millions of dollars, he said the primary motivation for going ahead with distributing the unchanged issue was that, “what Benazir Bhutto had to say should be heard, and this story deserved to be told.”

This raises two issues. First, if publishing Parade magazine is “simply different,” in terms of quick and timely publication, then it should not cover stories that could be time-sensitive. Benazir Bhutto was the victim of numerous assassination attempts, and it was well known that she traveled in the open with woefully inadequate security. A lot could, and obviously did, happen in the week leading up to the elections in Pakistan. Second, the article was not about what Benazir Bhutto had to say so much as it was what Gail Sheehy had to say about Bhutto. Siegel’s explanation rings false to me.

With a ten day lead time, the article should have been edited to reflect her death, her legacy and her impact on Pakistan and the world. I’d love to have been a fly on the boardroom wall when Parade was making its decision not to pull the magazine, to pretend that it was about anything other than money. I deeply suspect, however, that if the article had been about John F. Kennedy or an as-yet assassination of a prominent American politician, Parade would not have dreamed of publishing a similar and unedited cover story.

Besides the obvious disrespect for Bhutto and her family, and for accurate and timely journalism, the article confused many, many people. The tiny editor’s note on the second page corner of the newspaper (not Parade magazine – it was the newspaper editors who took on the onus of informing their readers that something was amiss with a magazine they did not publish) did nothing to mitigate the initial shock of seeing Bhutto referred to in the present tense. The article was not flattering, and was not an appropriate posthumous commentary on an assassinated political leader. She likely was corrupt and she likely was devious. She was also seen as the best hope for the future by many Pakistanis. There is no way that this can be justified. If Parade magazine is not prepared to edit and redistribute in a timely fashion, it should stay away from time-sensitive topics, or even topics that could potentially be time-sensitive. In this day and age, there are plenty of outfits that can pick up the slack, and do a much better job to boot.

Parade magazine has received many critical comments on its website. Curiously, and as a side note, when people type the word ‘Pakistan’ it appears as ‘****stan’ in the final comment. I’m sure there’s some security-related reason for the censorship, but it’s a little weird.